Broken
by Laurie Lu
Summary: Ziva 's been though a lot but so have Abby, Tony, Gibbs and McGee. Chapter 1, Ziva; Chapter 2, Abby; Chapter 3, Tony! Spoilers for season 7.
1. Ziva

A/N: This is my first fanfic in a looooong time and my very first for NCIS. It has not been beta read and so I have no idea how awful it is…

Spoilers for up to and including NCIS Season 7

Oh, and just in case you didn't know…I do NOT own NCIS…

**Broken **

-1-

She thought a lot these days. Spending three months – alone in a cell – held prisoner by terrorists would do that, she guessed.

She could not escape the barrage of what-ifs…

What if… she had a different father…?

What if… her mother had not died…?

What if… she had never joined Mossad…?

What if… Tali had not died…?

What if… she had never met Jenny…?

What if… she had never gone to the States…?

What if… she had not killed Ari…?

What if… she had never joined NCIS…?

What if… she had never become an investigator…?

What if… she had not been an assassin…?

She figured that last one was the reason God had allowed her capture and imprisonment… if God even existed…

She had never really thought about it before… the fact that her job for most of her adult life had been to capture, torture, and kill. It was not like she had never realized what her job entailed… it was just that she never allowed herself to dwell on what her actions meant.

Capture, torture, and kill…

She wondered how many people there were where she had done just that; who thought they were doing what was right… for them, for their country, for their people…

Most… she guessed… most people thought they were justified in their actions.

This was why at times she has felt she cannot hold what had happened to her in Africa against her captors… they had just been doing what was necessary to get information out of her…

How many times had she done the same? Information at any cost to further Mossad's agenda. You could substitute really any agency for Mossad, she supposed…

'Except NCIS' the words gnawed at the back of her brain… she could not substitute NCIS for Mossad in that sentence.

At NCIS she had learned that there was a basic sense of rules in which to play the game and that there were only certain things one could do to obtain information.

It had been difficult at first… interrogation without torture or the intimation of torture was something she had never done. Soon it became a second nature to her. When she returned to Mossad it made her a liability… she had problems reverting back to the capture, torture, and kill mentality. She became hesitant. Which she supposed was why the terrorists were able to capture her so effectively… they never would have been able to if she had not been a part of NCIS…

It was not that she _could_ not have been captured. That had always been a possibility. It was only that before NCIS she would have found a way to die before her capture and imprisonment.

Death never came and she never talked and she eventually realized there was more than one way to kill a person.

When she realized that a small smile formed on her lips as she remembered Ray. She had cared for him deeply and the loss of what could have been – what she had allowed herself to hope for – had hit her hard. He had been a dead man walking… full of life but his physical limitations taking their toll and eventually ending his life. Now she was a dead woman walking… only there was nothing physically wrong with her – as she had physically healed months ago – no, she was dead on the inside. Walking around like a mummy… no that was not it… like a…like a zombie. Yes, a zombie.

She could function and interact on a merely superficial level but it went no deeper. It was funny in a purely sardonic way because never before had she been so dead emotionally and yet so introspective. The juxtaposition was amusing to her.

She supposed that meant that she was not really dead emotionally… only numb. That she had simply pushed the emotions so far down inside of her in an attempt to contain them that it took only that much more to reach the jumbled mess. She was aware that the force used to stomp down her emotion most likely caused a pressurized effect and that one day she would probably explode in a disarray of sobbing emotions. For now that was so far off that she could not bring herself to worry about it. She would cross that river when she came to it.

Thinking about and preparing for the present and the immediate future was all she could do. She had come back to the States with no apartment, no possessions, no job… just the clothes on her back and a small bank account from before she had left.

The real problem was in pretending to be 'human' and present in the moment. It was more difficult than she had ever realized. Abby had not thought she was 'human' enough in the beginning when they were only co-workers and even during their acquaintanceship and she began to wonder what Abby thought of her now.

They were friends now but their decidedly different natures were always hanging over them. She could feel it. She had often wished she could be as expressive as Abby but there was a fear that held her back. A fear that she would be hurt emotionally, yes, but also a fear that she would get herself or one of her team hurt physically. She had to stay calm and collected in work situations and with Mossad one was always on the clock. If she let her guard down she left the possibility of someone sneaking through her defenses.

Being emotionally expressive was a luxury she could not afford. She had known that before Michael but somehow during Michael she let herself forget. For which she and Tony had paid a great price.

Now she was back with NCIS but it was not the same. She merely went through the motions, hiding her pain. To her surprise people seemed to buy her act. They gave her back her gun and badge, put her into the field, with a new title – Special Agent – and they played pranks on her…it was like she was the same. Like things had not changed. But she knew they had… she could feel their eyes follow her… watching her, waiting.

When she would find the courage to look up and meet their gaze McGee or Tony would pretend they were not staring, their guilty faces giving them away.

When she would look up to find Gibbs watching her he held his gaze and she would be the first to look away, guilt covering her features.

Guilt for what? She would ask herself.

For abandoning the team to stay in Israel?

For being weak?

For lying to everyone?

For lying to herself and knowing it?

For putting everyone in danger?

It was all those things and more.

She knew she had betrayed her friends by turning her back on them and staying in Israel… She felt that she had only gotten what she deserved… after they left her there. That it was her fault. That was the deep secret she kept to herself… it was her fault.

If only she had a different father…

Or, her mother had not died… or Tali or Ari…

If she had never joined Mossad or met Jenny or gone to the States or joined NCIS or become an investigator…

If she had never been an assassin…

If none of it had ever happened…

If only one thing was different then maybe she would not be how she was now… broken.

The what-ifs continue to haunt her…

What if her father loved her enough not to send her to die?

What if she had never met Gibbs or Tony or McGee or Abby or Ducky?

What if she had lived her whole life killing only because Mossad told her to?

What if she had never been found?

Those are things she dreams about. Those are things she has never spoken of aloud.

A/N: I've gotten most of chapter two written which will begin to include different characters… Reviews are greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading…


	2. Abby

**A/N:** I have the basic structure of the story worked out and it should be a total of no more than four or five chapters (one for Ziva, Abby, Tony, Gibbs and maybe one more), depending on where my fingers take me…all mistakes are mine, as it has not been beta read.

Dark themes are implied…please take the rating into consideration before reading further.

Spoilers for up to and including NCIS Season 7

Oh, and just in case you didn't know…I do NOT own NCIS…

**Broken **

-2-

She has often dreamt about her time in Africa and wakes up in cold sweats.

More recently she has had dreams about Tony, McGee and Gibbs finding her… or even sometimes just sitting at their desks talking. Only in her dreams there is a language barrier. She cannot speak or understand whatever language they are speaking, which does not seem to her to be English, and they cannot understand what she is saying in any language she attempts.

She wants to break down and cry when she has that dream. She has thought maybe it is her way of reminding herself that no one understands and that even with all the good people surrounding her she is alone. This thought always depresses her.

When she wakes up from one of her dreams her head feels like it has been beaten with a bowling ball and like her neck and shoulders have been trying to support its weight all night. It is at times like this that she reaches over and grabs her painkillers. She used to pride herself in being tough enough to take the pain but now the less she feels the better…

----------------

For the first month or so after she had been rescued she worried herself to the brim. Since she had gotten back she had not had her period. She could not bring herself to purchase a pregnancy test and so each day she waited and each day the oppressive air around her grew more suffocating. Until one day several weeks after she had been due for her cycle. When she realized that she had only skipped it because of stress or weight loss or a combination of the two she crumbled to the floor in a sobbing heap.

"_Ziva?" a confused voice called out to her._

_Ziva's eyes fell on the platform shoes peeking out from the adjoining stall. _

"_Ziva, I know that's you. Are you okay?"_

"_I am fine, Abby" She sniffled._

"_No you're not" Abby dismissed the idea off hand leaving the stall she had only just entered to stand in front of Ziva's stall door "If you're fine, then why are you crying on the floor of the bathroom?"_

"_It is nothing…I-I only…"_

"_You only what?" Abby was majorly concerned, this was not like Ziva. She wondered if she should go get Gibbs…Gibbs knew how to fix things._

"_I simply started my period, Abby, I am fine"_

_Oh, so no Gibbs then, she decided with a bit of humor. "Yeah, that can be kind of an emotional time for me, too. Are you sure you're okay?" Ziva opened her stall door._

"_Yes, Abby, only emotional because of my period" She smiled a small smile._

----------------

Back in her lab Abby was trying to cajole Major Mass Spec. into working properly, the incident with Ziva gnawing at the back of her mind. Eventually the concern worked its way through to the front of her mind and wouldn't allow her to think of anything else… even Plastic Death's new song couldn't take her mind off her worry.

The more she thought about it the more she was inclined to think that Ziva had broken Abby's rule number one or was that rule number two? One concerned birthdays and the other concerned falsehoods. Whichever rule it was Abby was sure that Ziva had broken it by lying to her. Ziva was not fine and as much as Abby had tried to make herself believe that the more she was sure that something was majorly wrong.

Ziva had a difficult time displaying emotion and at first Abby had a hard time reconciling that with, her now good friend, actually having the capacity to feel anything emotionally. Abby had come to realize that she and Ziva were fundamentally the same only they had different methods of expression – in that Abby did and Ziva, usually, did not. Abby wore her emotions on her sleeve while Ziva built bunkers and barricaded her emotions. Slowly but surely Ziva had been letting people in but since Ziva had returned from Africa Abby felt like they were starting off from square one only on a totally different game in which no one knew the rules.

Abby had never seen Ziva emotional enough to cry in a place where, although it afforded some privacy, almost anyone could walk in and find her – even due to hormones. She had worked with Ziva for four years and been a friend for about three-and-a- half years… in all that time Abby could not recall Ziva making complaint due to her cycle or even being a bit emotional because of it… It didn't make sense… what had happened? When she closed her eyes she could see Ziva's face still so sad but also a look of relief covering her features… She was relieved about her period…

Abby wandered back to Major Mass Spec. to apply the band-aid she had taken out of its wrapper, tears beginning to pool in her eyes.

Ziva had been captured and imprisoned for three months…

She had been tortured by men who would stop at nothing to further their terrorist agenda… who wouldn't think twice about breaking her friend on the inside when breaking her on the outside had failed to work…

"_Abby?" McGee stood just inside the lab, Caf-Pow in one hand, a somewhat bewildered expression on his face._

"_Oh, Timmy!" She rushed toward him and pressed him to her as she cried._

"_Abby, what's wrong?"_

----------------

Her earlier relief caused a torrent of emotions to flood her system which put her body on overload and consequently caused her current exhaustion. As she readied for bed that night she heard a knock on the door. On the other side stood Abby, eyes red and puffy as though she had been crying.

"_Abby, what is wrong?" She asked concern lacing her voice as Abby entered. _

"_I was thinking" Abby sniffled, holding Bert to her chest in an attempt to comfort herself "and I wanted you to have Bert for a while" she stretched her hand out to Ziva, offering her Bert._

"_Why, Abby?" She asked deeply puzzled, taking the stuffed hippo._

"_Because, I was thinking about it and remembering earlier and trying to remember before that" Abby babbled leaving Ziva thoroughly confused._

"_What?"_

"_I think I know why you were so upset earlier" Abby whispered on the verge of tears. Her arms hugging herself in an attempt to resist crushing Ziva to her. _

_Ziva tensed "I do not know what you think you know, Abby" she warned._

"_I know you, Ziva. I wanted you to be okay and so I pretended you were… and then you were crying on the floor and I wanted to believe you were just hormonal so I did... But I also know you were captured by evil men who hurt you. I know you never want to talk to me or Tony or Gibbs or Ducky or McGee about what happened and you never want to hang out anymore"_

"_So?" She replied somewhat tersely. _

"_So…I wanted you to know that I'm here for you. And when I'm not.. Bert's here. That's all" _

"_You do not know what you are talking about, Abby" Ziva shook her head, in denial. _

"_You think I don't know? You think I live in a bubble where nothing bad in the world can touch me?" Abby asked tears streaking down her cheeks "Hmm? Well, then you don't know what you're talking about, either."_

"_Abby" Ziva sighed "I did not mean to imply…" She trailed off leaving the sentence hanging midair, her voice unable to continue._

After Abby had left Ziva did find comfort in holding Bert to her chest and allowing herself to cry as Bert comforted her.

**A/N:** Thanks to Frutti for reviewing! I appreciate it. I don't know that I'll continue but I wanted to post part 2 since it was done and because you were kind enough to review.


	3. Tony

**A/N:** This part was difficult to write and I have a feeling it may be difficult for some to read.

Please note that, I have changed the rating so take the higher rating into consideration before reading.

Spoilers for up to and including NCIS Season 7

Oh, and just in case you didn't know…I do NOT own NCIS…

**Broken **

-3-

There came a point when the tears, for the most part, stopped and life continued to move around her only without her participation. It was sometime after that when she realized she could no longer live her life on the sidelines. She had to feel something again and it needed to be something other than all the numbness.

It was funny, she thought… people usually considered numbness to be the absence of feeling but she knew differently. It was not that there was no feeling it was just that it took that much more to get her to respond to that feeling. She walked around as though she were in a fog. It took her longer to react to the people around her. Sometimes she did not even realize something had happened right in front of her until after the fact.

"_Ziva" Tony stood in front of her desk, backpack resting on his right shoulder "Zee-vah!" he repeated much louder. _

_Ziva broke her steady far-off gaze, her eyes shooting up toward his "What?"_

"_Come on, Probie, grab your gear. Gibbs is gonna leave without us" Tony said, rushing off to make sure the elevator doors didn't close before they were safely inside._

It was like she was walking around in someone else's body which had no connection to her brain. Sometimes she could not help doing something even though her mind screamed at her not to do it.

Like when Tony finally caught her unawares. She had been off in her own little world when suddenly Tony was behind her. She knew in the moment that it was only Tony and she would be fine but she could not stop her body from reacting… nor could she stop Tony from seeing that reaction.

At first he had laughed and pointed in good fun until he had realized she was trembling. As much as she wanted to stop herself from her body's reaction the more she realized she could not. Tony became all too suddenly quiet, a remorseful look crossing his features. She could tell he wanted to touch her reassuringly and so before he could her body finally received her brain's message and she was gone before he could extend his hand.

----------------

A few days later, the team had been called in on a murder-suicide. From the look of things it seemed as though the young Lance Corporal came home from his tour in Afghanistan unable to cope. The marks on Mrs. Lance Corporal's wrists suggested restraints had been used to bind his wife for God knew how long and he finally snapped earlier that morning killing the both of them. Ducky would know more after a more thorough examination.

Tony watched Ziva, her face stoic, as she fingered the restraints attached to the headboard, lost in thought. He couldn't help but wonder what horrible images she was recalling. As the thought entered his mind he shook it out, unable to stay sane if he thought about such things. Tony worried about her… a _lot_. She seemed much smaller, more hesitant, less… Ziva. He'd been trying to give her space, allow her to work things out in her own time and find her way back to him… to their team, he corrected with a shake of his head. But it seemed that the longer he ignored the problem the further away Ziva appeared to go.

Sometimes he wasn't sure which was worse… thinking she was dead and slowly dying inside or watching her close down, receding inside of herself and something dying inside of him a little more each day. At least with her alive and around him he could look at her, breathe her in, and even occasionally touch her. It gave him hope… a hope that when he'd thought she was dead he didn't have… a hope that one day things would be better.

----------------

Several days after that, the team was out on a case. They had a tip concerning where a suspect, they were in pursuit of, was hiding. His location centered on an old, abandoned building.

With guns drawn the team split up, Tony and Ziva at one entrance, Gibbs and McGee at the other.

As Tony silently made his way around the first room he heard a loud thud and turned to motion something to Ziva. It was then that he realized that Ziva was no longer behind him. After spitting out a few curses, Tony barreled his way into the next room, gun drawn, eyes scanning for his AWOL partner.

Where had she gone?

In the next room his question was mercifully answered. She had the man on the floor; her knee in the _accused_ criminal's back, locking the handcuffs around his wrists.

His relief was momentary as he noticed something wrong immediately. Her breathing was extremely labored and as she stood he noticed there was a fresh gash below her left eye where blood pooled, threatening to fall. His body tensed in anger that she'd been hurt; he watched her half a moment longer in an effort to calm down.

"_Ziva" Tony walked toward her. He tipped her chin up with his finger and to his left to get a better look at her injury, lightly caressing just below the gash._

_While she allowed the touch, it was clear that Ziva did not understand what was wrong "What?" she asked confused and somewhat annoyed, focusing on not jerking her head away. _

"_You're bleeding" he whispered softly._

_Her hand went up to where Tony's had been only moments ago, wincing slightly "Oh" she murmured as her eyes set sight on the blood on her fingers. It worried her that she had not been aware of the injury but on instinct or self-preservation she added "I am fine, Tony" as she pulled herself away from his comforting touch and slowly walked away._

Later that night Ziva sat on her sofa, legs underneath her. One arm rested on the sofa arm while the other one assisted its fingers in poking at it. She pressed her fingers harder against the skin of her arm.  
Why did it take so much more force to feel that?

I am fine, she told herself. She repeated it as a mantra to herself over and over again.

Why had she been unable to feel her earlier injury, at first?

She was fine. Everything had to be… fine

All the numbness, at first a comfort now, deeply troubled her.

----------------

That deeply troubling feeling followed her… and it was around that time when she found herself at a rundown bar she had never been to, looking for anonymity.

She had steadfastly refused any alcohol due to it being a depressant; but, as she began to feel less and less the lure of feeling something, even if it wasn't something good, became more and more appealing.

Usually, she could drink most men under the table and still have all of her wits about her. Unfortunately, over the summer her body had taken many beatings and been starved for weeks at a time. As a result she lost weight and, through inactivity, muscle mass. Her once finely toned body was now much softer. She was still unable to eat like she had before her capture due to her stomach 'shrinking' and had consequently had very little to eat that day. By the time she had finished her fourth drink Ziva was very much intoxicated.

This routine went on for about a week before she ended up taking a man home with her.

When they arrived at her apartment, she smiled knowingly at him. Telling him that she knew what he wanted and laying down the ground rules before she unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, allowing them to pool around his feet. She knelt before him and took him into her mouth, trying to suck without gagging. Once he released himself into her mouth she could barely keep the bile from traveling up her throat. She made for the bathroom, telling the anonymous man he could leave. He was gone moments later.

Tears streaking down her cheeks, she knelt in front of the toilet bowl feeling like she was going to be sick. Her ragged breath eventually becoming somewhat more even, she realized something… she had felt something she had not felt for the better part of the year… she had felt the tiniest bit of control.

Tony watched the man leave Ziva's apartment. He'd been driving to her apartment since she had returned from Africa just to check on her to make sure she was okay and reassure himself that she was still there. Only, he had never found the courage to make it to her door. He couldn't seem to believe that she wasn't going to vanish in a puff of smoke one day, as if it had all been a dream. To make certain he usually sat in his car and watched surreptitiously, able to make the occasional figure out through the window. He was only there long enough to prove to himself that she was safe and then he would leave but the other night she surprised him by deciding to go out.

Since she had been leaving most every night to go get drunk he felt responsible to ensure her safety by continuing to follow her. Part of him knew it was wrong and felt guilty but the other part didn't care.

So, Tony continued to follow Ziva, making sure she made it safely back home. Tonight Tony was uneasy. He didn't know who that man was and to be truthful he wasn't sure that Ziva did either. By the time he'd gathered the courage to pretend he was just in the neighborhood the man he saw Ziva with was leaving. He had a bad feeling about the situation. He wanted to go confront her… ask about the man he'd seen with her but he knew he had no right. So, he compromised with himself deciding instead to call her; desperately wanting to hear her voice and ensure her safety.

----------------

It was interesting, she thought, how someone could change so completely in so little time. A little over six months ago she was her old, confident self and now… well not even half a year later she was sucking a guy off in the stall of the men's bathroom at some bar… It was not as though she enjoyed the actual act itself… no, it was just that she liked the power she had over these men. They did as she said or they would not get what they wanted. While they were at her mercy she could elicit basically any response she wanted from them.

The power and control she experienced were some of the only times she felt like her old self. When it was all over, though, she felt worse than before and the need to relive the bit of power and control she had only a moment ago crept back up. The need for it was cyclical and all encompassing. She honestly felt that she had never been so desperate for something in her entire life.

The need for control had always pulled at her… as far back as she could remember… since before she was a young girl whose friends were often collateral damage… probably since she first realized that her father's pragmatic view of the world caused him to understand that she and Ari and Tali would only be so useful to him. That one day their usefulness would most likely end.

She had tried so hard for so many years to get her father to see that she could be useful in many ways.

As a child she tried to lavish extra love and affection on the man hoping it would be reciprocated. She hoped that he would realize that maybe people you love are good for hugs and kisses and smiles and that maybe that is enough to satisfy some people.

When that did not work she realized that if she wanted to prove her usefulness to her father she would need to take an active interest in his training of her. Every once in a while he would take her out with a gun to practice and remark on how she was improving. She figured what she needed was to instigate the situations more often… show him that she was not just a little girl desperate for his love but that she could do anything he asked of her and she would do it well. She kept at that strategy for years. It was only until after Africa that she finally realized it would never work… that it never was going to work… no matter how hard she tried.

Besides it was not like her father did not love her, at least at certain times; it was only that he did not love her unconditionally. She had always felt the strings attached to that love as she moved about, testing her boundaries. She had always known there was a limit. The funny thing was that for the longest time she felt that she had the power to change that. But now she knew that she had never had any real control over how much her father loved her. Just like she had no real control over her father sending her to die or what those animals had done to her in Africa.

But now, sucking some guy off in the men's restroom of some bar… she had the control and the power felt intoxicating while she was in possession of it.

----------------

Tony fidgeted nervously as he sat in a corner booth at the bar he'd followed Ziva to. What concerned him was that he hadn't seen Ziva in, he glanced at his clock, a _long_ time… She had headed toward the head and then a few minutes later a man she had been speaking too had done the same. He gave them each a few more seconds and then he shot up and toward the restrooms.

----------------

She could feel the man start to come undone and as she attempted to prolong his torture she felt him begin to thrust as his fingers laced through her hair to keep her in place. Frozen in panic her mind screamed the rules: No touching! No moving! For a full second she could not breathe, she could not move and then all at once she began clawing at him… pushing him away… gargling nonsensical words, attempting to find her bearings.

The next thing she knew Tony had the man by the collar, hitting him square in the jaw. The image was so unexpected and so farfetched that at first she tried to tell herself that it was only a figment of her imagination. It was not until she heard the sound of bones cracking that she was brought back to reality.

"You think you can touch her?" Tony seethed emphatically "You think you have that right? You will _never_ lay a hand on her again."

"Tony" She muttered her voice small "Tony" she tried again, louder this time.

Tony turned around; looking at her huddled in the corner.

"What are you doing?"

Speechlessness rarely infected Tony but for half a minute he just looked at her like what he was doing was obvious to anyone with eyes. "You didn't want him to touch you" he exhaled "He touched you. I'm teaching him a lesson."

"I meant, what are you doing _here_?"

"Oh" He thought about coming up with some excuse but the look she gave him told him that he'd been busted. There was really no point in lying when she already knew the truth. "Well, you know… in the neighborhood."

"Hmm" She considered with a slight nod of her head. "Let him go, Tony" Her voice was clear as she stood up.

As though he just realized he still had a hold of the man Tony looked at his hands, releasing him suddenly. He moved toward Ziva cautiously "Are you okay?"

Ziva's eyes looked far off, at no particular point, in the distance. They looked at the floor and the wall, made their way to Tony's chest before finally gaining the nerve to look him in the face "No" she responded "No, I am not okay" she released a shaky breath.

The relief that followed that admission was immediate. She was not fine and not because of what happened that night but because of everything that had happened. For the first time she realized that maybe she needed some help… needed to be able to lean on people, her friends. "Would you take me home, please Tony?"

He nodded silently. He would do anything for her.

**A/N:** I don't mean to sound petulant however no one seems to really care for this story (if reviews are an indicator; I've never seemed to have this problem with my other stories and so I'm not really sure how to feel) so I am not going to try to finish the last chapters. If they come they come, but I am no longer going to actively try. I have finals anyway and this has just been a way to avoid studying and writing my academic papers. The only reason I'm writing this author's note is so that those who have taken an active interest know not to be on the lookout for a new chapter...  
Thanks to all those who did review! Please, do not feel slighted. If I finish with the last chapters I will pm them to whomever has reviewed and wants them. You can just pm me no need to review again…


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